Open Access seems to hold advantages for the scientific community and for the general public as well as for governments. The former opinion movement is now evolving into more structured initiatives promoted by institutions and publishers. The question is: to motivate or to mandate? An overview of the state of the art in Brazil, in India and in Europe, with a keynote by Stevan Harnad from Canada.

i.e. is Open Access a matter of interest only for researchers and scientists? Or else does it impact on common people and their everyday lives and how? Is open access a right for taxpayers? In other words if research is publicly financed shouldn’t the access to the results of research be free?
Derek Law and Sely Costa conduct a mock debate on these issues.